A motorcycle guy gets his chest blown away on lower Chandler Street this past Saturday night. His soul is thrown off his bike and floats to Heaven like some inner-city feather. And that is the end of his dream called life. His Saturday night, all Saturday nights. No more bodegas, pizzerias, BBQ chick, cell phone shacks, dreamy sunsets, kisses, or cold cheap beers with friends on a summer night.
photos: Rosalie Tirella
The beauty of life in the here and now, in Worcester, gone forever. Poof. Like magic it disappears from him just as mysteriously as it came to him.
His 46-year-old body, however, is no feather. It dies a horrific death from massive internal hemorrhaging, crushed bones … the blood must be washed from the cement … physical and emotional shock. The pain keeps coming no matter how hard the EMT kids work on him.
A Honda plows into him on Chandler Street, and he plows into a Nissan. 2,000-pound hunks of moving metal.
What could he do? How could he win?
A slow motion dream for the dying man, this accident on the corner of Wellington and Chandler streets, but not for the gawkers. The witnesses know it is over – in seconds – at one of Worcester’s most deadly intersections. An urban space where many cars often speed up as they race to the tony West Side of the city, drivers pretending not to see all the poor Latinos, Whites and Blacks who live in the crummy three deckers and apartment buildings that line the street. They criss cross it every day – at all hours. They walk, run, stagger across the wide 4 -lane Chandler Street. Sometimes they’re on bicycles or pushing baby carriages or holding the hands of their little kids – the 5 year olds holding on to Papa or Mama tight with one small hand and covering their ear with their other soft little hand. The traffic is too loud for them!
The poor cross their busy street to get to the street’s local restaurants, Chandler Elementary School, the Family Health Center inner-city clinic/urgent care, Community Health Link mental health center, a homeless shelter, the several storefront Pentecostal churches, friends’ houses. As a driver, you have to go slow, you have to be AWARE at all times cuz life comes out at you from all angles on Chandler Street. Four or so years ago, I was the center of mayhem as I rescued a stray cat at the exact intersection where the biker was killed. It was a young cat, really an older kitten like my Cece (black too!),
and I almost got us both killed running out of my car into traffic, scooping up the kitten and running back to my car with the kitten clasped to my chest. But it was OK. The neighborhood folks – the community – were good and had my back as I navigated the stream of cars.
If only I could have saved the biker – but how?
They called him T.C…. Family, friends, the community, prayed TC did not suffer long. Of course, he did. A bunch of biker kids and men and their friends rode up to the site of his death a few days ago to mourn …
… They left their not so pretty neighborhoods to gather at the not so pretty intersection of Wellington and Chandler streets to say GOOD BYE, TC! To pay tribute to a fellow biker. To connect with him – and each other.
If you read my columns, you know I love these outsiders, inner-city bike guys and gals who cobble together these unlicensed, unloved sometimes kooky sometimes cool urban motor babies. They take their lives into their hands when they ride them. But it’s all they’ve got on a lovely summer day in the ‘hood. They want to feel free like the wind. Can you blame them? You were young once too! Their motto? Bikes Up! Guns down!
The bikers are loathed by Woo’s conservative crew … people like Paul Collyer (the Somerville-based political gadfly who runs FB pages CHANGE WORCESTER and WORCESTERS DIRTY SECRET where he posts Turtle Boy/City Councilor Mike Gaffney racist rants) and his toxic political allies, the always race baiting Woo City Councilor Mike Gaffney and Turtle Boy-Aidan Kearney who always gets the ugly ball rolling with a post that fires up people’s racial and socio economic prejudices and fears. Collyer, Turtle Boy, Gaffney AND PREZ DONALD TRUMP, cannot accept a global, often poor, always multicultural America, Worcester…a world that is messier than they’d like to see. These guys want to shut voices down … or they do not understand…know how to listen to the new global urban landscape.
The Worcester Police force knew how to listen to the TC crowd! The Worcester police officers who went into the big crowd on that summer day and talked softly and dispersed the group without so much as raising their voices understood the community’s pain. They did not fan the Collyer/Gaffney/Turtle Boy flames of hatred, racism, ignorance. Nope. THEY WERE OUTSTANDING police officers who did an excellent job of keeping the situation from blowing up. They got traffic moving again, kept everybody calm and, best of all, respected the bikers’, outsiders’, pain, feelings. They smiled, chatted, WORKED smart so the situation did not escalate…THEY DEFUSED THE SITUATION. Kudos!
Watch the videos. They make me sad. A bunch of bikers, people of color, mostly poor, mostly cut off from the mainstream…scores of them gathered at lower Chandler Street and riding their bikes up and down where TC died. They did “burns” in his honor and chanted TC !TC! TC! and made more videos on their cell phones to share, to tell the world TC MATTERED – ALL LIVES MATTER! In a video you see one big black guy looking choked up, confused, softly muttering TC, TC … and shaking his head. Not the face of violence.
Not at all.
The TC “wake” was political, was peaceful, was REAL. It was a statement. It was a love song. Like a bird on the wing.
Below: Check out this ol’ photo from the Worcester Historical Museum! Embrace the glorious porches! When so many of our city neighborhoods had sturdy, even beautiful, decorative, back and front porches … You could park 4 or 5 of your old kitchen chairs on them, invite family and socialize … Or you could just amble over to a city park.
photo: Worcester Historical Museum
Below: Worcester’s Green Island – my neighborhood – today! Very few front porches – most of them have been torn down.😥😥😥 The ‘hood loses some of its social spiciness! I remember as a kid standing on our back porch chatting with my next door neighbor who was standing on her back porch. You could also stand on your porch and yell up or down to your upstairs or downstairs neighbors who were hanging out on their porches!
Ward Street
Siegel Street
Harding/Endicott streets …
… Streets most likely named after, like all the streets in my ‘hood – some of the oldest streets in the city💙 – Revolutionary War poo-bahs or Worcester industrialist hoo-hahs. I was born on (French general) Lafayette Street, my kid sisters had friends on nearby (General) Lodi Street. Was Harding Street the namesake of some military dynamo-killer, too?
Ahhhh, but I digress! Check out the new beautiful porches in my neck of the ‘hood! Take note of what the NEW landlord has done to Worcester City Councilor Konnie Lukes’s old (as in former) slum building on Harding Street: he’s torn down Lukes’s former, God-awful, rickety, dangerous, paint-peeling-and-faded, OUT OF CODE, eye-sore slum porches! He is putting new beautiful ones up! Ones that aren’t baby/toddler death traps! Yay!💗💗💗
The new landlord has actually HIRED capable contractors – a move the cheapskate Lukes would abhor – who expertly REBUILT AND REPLACED Konnie’s old crap last week. Just a few months after buying Konnie’s urban mess…the one she and hubby Jim turned a blind eye toward FOR YEARS as she, on the City Council floor, preached urban core revitalization, tidiness and brightness yet owned the shittiest rental property. Of course, she and Jim lived on the swanky Woo West Side and vacationed at their Cape Cod home – far away from us hoi polloi!!!
Hah! Konnie, Ms. Crusading City Councilor … at Worcester City Hall railing against the disrespect shown inner-city Worcester at every turn, but shitting all over her in “real life”! The hypocrite!
When I saw the new porches being built the other day, I shouted: “GREAT JOB, GUYS!” to the crew working so hard in the summer heat wave. I gave them a thumbs up! They grinned and shouted back to me! The new porches: so safe and in compliance – a definite lift to the Harding Street/lower Endicott Street area, these pressure-treated, sturdy back porches!
Here’s what the porches used to look like (for years, up until a few months ago), when City Councilor Konstantina Lukes owned them/the building:
Pathetic.
Jim and Konnie’s other rental property, a few streets away in Green Island, made the newspapers as photogs rushed in to take pictures of her apartments with their gurgling, non-functioning toilets and a single light bulb hanging from a cord in a kitchen – the only “light fixture.” Like in a 1940s prison movie.
Why did Konnie even pretend to care about Worcester’s urban core when she so blatantly hurts us?
Why is she still on the Worcester City Council?
Aside from Lukes’s voter-catnip always lowest residential tax rate stance, what does Konnie Lukes really stand for?
At this point in her overly long Woo political career, nothing. Lukes is simply a REACTIONARY who adds zippo to the urban conversation. She was always the City Council naysayer: now she’s morphed into someone dangerous. Some one, like Turtle Boy-Aidan Kearney and his brigade, who shouts NO! to the new Worcester and the challenges she faces: refugees from the Mid East, Africa and other war-ripped regions; poorer people; hungry children – 1 in 4 Worcester kids goes to bed hungry; folks with no entry into the working class; heartless, absentee, do-nothing landlords in place of the old non-greedy, pretty nice, property-loving Worcester three decker landlords of just 10 years ago … a city core unable to right herself because the new global economy is just not there for the regular folks who live here.
For City Councilor Konnie Lukes – on the heels of the tragic deaths of the 2 Woo babies this past week, for her to intimate on the City Council floor that their deaths were a “refugee” problem is pure evil. A la the Turtle Boy brigade.
Konnie Lukes needs to go – not run for City Council and win office for the umpteenth time. Several years ago she told me she would not run for public office if there were new candidates she liked to replace her (read: reactionary, like Konnie…Calling Michael Gaffney and his tool, Coreen!!) I was pleased with Konnie’s decision. She was in her early 70s back then and had almost a half century of public “service” under her girdle belt. But Lukes can’t let go of the spot light – and all the free perks$$$ and the almost $30,000 per year Worcester City Councilor “stipend.”
This city has left Konnie Lukes and the Turtle Boy creepos way behind. And they cannot adjust to the new reality … . Konnie, like Aidan Kearney, no longer “gets” her city, cannot embrace her new people/cultures/challenges. Her ignorance, her anger, her belief that to solve our social problems all we need to do is lock folks out of/turn folks away from Worcester, an IMMIGRANT CITY, is a REACTIONARY move. Dangerous.
This city’s evolution is about way more than Konnie’s old porches …
… but Konnie’s old porches are a good place to start.
The same can be said for Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney – he is just as American-Democracy-hating and truth-twisting as Donald Trump. Gaffney is a lying, combative street fighter, just like his hero!
By Rosalie Tirella
So a few weeks ago we were on the telephone with the Holden police – Turtle Boy blogger Aidan Kearney now lives in the Jefferson part of Holden – and has become that Worcester suburb’s bete noire. I will not discuss why I called the good officers on the bad Turtle Boy, but I was surprised when the Holden copper told me he was familiar with Turtle Boy – that he had been getting phone calls about Turtle Boy-Kearney all week long!
I said: Well, hot damn! So you know how it spins with the Turtle! Worcester’s hater is now YOUR hater! Worcester’s community divider is now YOUR community divider! Worcester’s problem is now YOUR problem, officer!
Loathed in Worcester because of his loathesome Turtle Boy blog Kearney can now be loathed in Holden, a much smaller pond with a much larger collective memory. Like all small towns. We are hoping Holden will do to Turtle Boy Kearney what he has done to Worcester and its minority communities – box him in, marginalize him, stereotype him, laugh at him, accuse him of all sorts of crimes and misdemeanors.
Karma’s a bitch, Aidan!
Turtle Boy-Aidan’s exodus from Worcester makes sense: with his son now almost old enough (or old enough) to be going to school – being part of a school system/community – bully boy Aidan Kearney-Turtle Boy did not want to see the pitch forks turned on his kid. And his growing family. Which would happen here. Because he has trashed an entire city! Made a million enemies with his abusive and stupid blog.
Turtle Boy Kearney, his wife, little boy and baby girl had to pack it all up and … run away.
Now Aidan Kearney belongs to Jefferson-Holden – a white, mostly upper-middle class town where he doesn’t come in contact with the “wangstas,” “hoodrats” and skanks that he writes about in his blog every day and sees EVERYWHERE in Worcester and places like Southbridge, Gardner, Brockton, Lawrence … you know, the state’s Gateway Cities, once great factory towns now struggling to reinvent themselves. Kick a city when she’s down – that’s Turtle Boy Kearney’s M.O.
The Turtle Boy has taken a huge dump on these places, Worcester included. Turned our people into cartoon characters that just sit around in Section 8 housing smoking weed, selling their food stamps, abusing their kids, growing more morbidly obese or scrawny by the second. Turtle Boy has taken poverty, mental illness and poor job prospects for uneducated American workers and turned it all into one big dystopian joke that all the haters in Worcester can laugh at, feel superior to.
And Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney supports it all – has for years and continues to do so by purchasing $$$ ads on the Turtle Boy blog.
Gaffney’s one of the few advertisers left – including a gun seller and a place where there had been a murder. Gaffney is in fitting company!
A peek today at the once porn-ad-choked Turtle Boy blog shows us a gray, square ad with a “click here for a free consultation” typed over it. You click on the ad and you see … Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney! It’s an ad for Gaffney’s ambulance-chasing lawyering business.
Typical Gaffney charade like this one which the media uncovered a few weeks ago …
……
…..
Up until a few weeks ago, for years, Gaffney had his decades-old photo and lawyer ad on the Turtle Boy blog, plainly visible, with the words “Attorney Gaffney” written for all to see.
Now the Gaffer is ashamed of being aligned with the Turtle (which he is) – now sees the Turtle-Boy-Gaffney-bond as a liability (which it is).
But not quite.
Gaffney still needs Turtle Boy Aidan Kearney and his followers/readers – many Worcester voters. Gaffney still needs his evil cheerleader and mouth piece. So maybe he can be Woo mayor some day!😱😱😱😱 So Gaffney creates and pays for $$$ a Secret Turtle Boy ad. Slippery as always!
So WHAT IS MICHAEL GAFFNEY – a city councilor who is so ravenous to be mayor that he will do or say anything, no matter how nefarious, to accomplish his political goal – REALLY SUPPORTING?
Besides the usual Turtle Boy hatred … this recent Turtle Boy blog post made me especially sad, reminded me of what Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney really stands for:
The recent Turtle Boy Aidan blog post I am writing about today was written by Turtle Boy a while ago. It’s about a little girl … around 7 years old who is identifying as a little boy. AG Maura Healey is supporting the little boy and his family – in the face of the Trump administration’s cruel roll back of transgender folks’ rights (kids will be physically hurt, bullied, deprived of expressing their true voices because of Trump!) Aidan-Kearney-Turtle-Boy, as in the dark on this issue as Donald Trump and his nightmare of a Cabinet are, just had to chime in on the news. The header of his recent post:
“Maura Healey Using This Confused 7 Year Old Who Thinks She’s Transgender As A Political Prop. Is The Most Disgusting Thing I’ve Ever Seen A Politician Do”
Turtle Boy-Aidan’s evil post begins:
“If your 7 year old girl says she’s a boy, what do you do? Pump her up with hormones, feed into the delusion, and give yourself the SJW medal of honor. Tell her that boys have penises and they’re disgusting and then give her a popsicle.”
And more nuggets of ignorance from the Turtle Boy blog post:
” … Trump announced yesterday that he was rolling back President Obama’s executive order that forces schools across the country to allow any student to use any locker room, so long as they declare themselves a member of that gender beforehand. I know, the horror. But the fact of the matter is that in states like Massachusetts the bathroom and locker room rules will not be changed … .”
” … Seriously, this girl’s parents should be ARRESTED. This is sick and twisted.”
” …. disgusting political stunts I have ever seen, Maura Healey brought up an 8 year old girl to condemn Trump for coming after her 7 year old “brother” Jacob, who has a vagina and is in fact a girl. This is really the most vile thing I have EVER seen a politician do:”
“Seriously, this girl’s parents should be ARRESTED. This is sick and twisted. They allowed their eight year old daughter to be Maura Healey’s political prop.”
“Right now we’re here to talk about why it’s important for your sister to undergo dangerous hormone therapy so Mom and Dad can pat themselves on the back for being progressive. Because for you puberty will be a natural part of life, but for your sister puberty is a disease and the only way to prevent this disease is to load her up with puberty-blocking hormones, because science and biology are bad.”
InCity Times was the first newspaper in Worcester to support and write about transgender folks and their fight for civil/human rights – see our story on Jesse on this website. So we come to this issue with a special passion! Turtle Boy Kearney is WRONG ON SO MANY FRONTS here!!!: No one can force a human being to be a certain sex; most trans people ALWAYS felt who they were meant to be – from teenie tiny kidhood! No one forces transgender folks to take hormones! – parents do not inject hormones into their kids! Most trans folks CHOOSE to make hormone therapy a part of identifying. And their desire to be who God intended them to be can be made a living hell by family, community and society if people (like Turtle Boy) don’t understand the issue. Contrary to what Turtle Boy writes on his blog, a kid self-identifying is not pulling some gag to mess up society and invade the “wrong” restroom – it’s a real and true THIS-IS-WHO-I-AM moment. It’s the need to USE THE CORRECT RESTROOM! To be HONEST with society! This can be so difficult in today’s America that psychotherapy is often a big piece of the transgender person’s “coming out.”
The amazing thing for me is not Aidan-Turtle Boy’s usual bashing, cruel and totally stupid, misinformed, DANGEROUS and possibly hate-crime-inducing take on the issue but THAT A BLUE COLLAR GUY, a TURTLE BOY reader!!, actually brought the EVIL of this Turtle Boy post home to me months before Aidan even wrote it … . The guy is a TB rah rah reader but he’s also married to a wonderful woman – a school principal. A year or two ago the guy told me his wife, the school principal, had a boy in a kindergarten class in her school who was identifying as a girl. He was serious when he told me this. Trying to understand. Thinking of what that really meant – for the 5 year old, for her family, for her teachers, for her classmates. How could the girl be supported at school? How could everybody learn? Accept? Love? He was so serious as he told me all this. As a dad with young kids he may have never thought about the issue, but he knows little kids don’t – can’t – lie about something like gender. Now that his wife, an educator, a professional with college and post-college degrees and psychology courses galore under her belt, was grappling with the issue, he was, too. Trying to figure it out. In a real way. This blue collar rough around the edges guy. He made me proud!
The fact that this guy is not getting his “facts” from the fucked up Aidan Kearney-Turtle Boy but from his wife, a pretty wonderful person, a caring human being wanting to do the right thing, makes all the difference. We wish this could happen to all the Turtle riders – including Michael Gaffney!
But it won’t. Turtle Boy and Worcester City Councilor Gaffney exploit the crises, revelations, changes and growth in Worcester. No room for illumination here, folks! Screw a BETTER WORLD! These two guys, each having his own motives that overlap, always muddy the waters, create sadness, perpetuate ignorance and fan prejudice. We’re certain every multi-cultural, diverse American place – WHICH IS EVERY WHERE in the U.S. – has a Michael Gaffney and Turtle Boy to sow the hate. Just as America has Donald Trump and his evil mouth piece and cheer leader, Breitbart editor Steve Bannon. They exploit the fears and prejudices of folks who long for a white, straight Worcester and America …
photo: Worcester Historical Museum
… a place that never really existed.
They kill community.
They kill people!
I write this because … Years ago, when I was a little girl growing up in Green Island, there was a woman – big, vulgar, brassy, tough – who had two daughters in their late teens. I’ll call them “Betty” and “Jane.” Jane was movie star beautiful – long blond hair, lovely pink 1970s lip-stick-slathered lips, pearly white teeth and beautiful smile. When Jane walked down Lafayette Street in her tight, faded bell bottom blue jeans and pretty blouse tucked in HEADS TURNED. She was always polite to my mother and me and my two kid sisters – fans who ooohed and ahhed at her loveliness like everyone else in the neighborhood – when we passed her on the street walking home from school or from the dry cleaners where my mom worked 60 hours a week as a “counter girl.”
Then there was daughter Betty. Betty was tall and lanky. She wore no make up and had short hair – a boy’s hair cut. Her stride was loping and she wore boy jeans. As a little kid I wondered if Betty was a young man but I never asked Ma. I just kinda followed her lead, which was: She was always nice to Betty – treated Betty exactly the way she treated her sister Jane: with respect, politeness, the same “hello!” and beautiful Ma smile …
Rosalie’s mother had the prettiest smile!
… My mother never lectured us. And she never ever bad mouthed or made fun of anyone. She led by example. Taught us through her deeds. And when it came to people in our already diverse inner-city neighborhood Ma was the Statue of Liberty! A beacon of beauty and hope!
So we kids followed Ma’s lead! “Hi, Betty!” we’d chirp, if we saw Betty walking down a street in Green Island. “Hi, Jane!” we’d chirp if we saw her sister walking down to the park.
The girls always smiled and said “hi” back. Though Betty’s smile was never as wide as her sister’s. She always seemed serious. Day after day. Year after year.
One day, Betty kind of disappeared. We still saw Jane in the ‘hood, but never Betty. She was gone. Maybe I asked Ma about it, maybe I didn’t. But we did learn that Betty had hanged herself.
This shocked me and my sisters. Betty was a part of our world, always nice to us – polite in a rough neighorhood filled with bullies. Now she was gone!
In many ethnic urban neighborhoods different kinds of folks took their lives. We called them “ghosts.” A Polish immigrant who never “got” America, never adjusted to life here on any level, who was always in his apartment and always looking so unhappy. A street person who drank and drank and then collapsed dead drunk in the bushes by the PNI club on Lafayette Street to sleep it off every day. … One day I asked Ma if I could give the guy a blanket. She said “Yes” and gave me a nice clean full-sized baby blue blanket to give to him. I ran out of our flat and walked up to him – he was all tottering disshelved mess, his fly open – and gave him the blanket. From Ma and me. No words exchanged. Just the doing, the deed. He took the blue blanket and went to his bushes behind the PNI, by the fence, to collapse. The boys in the neighborhood saw the giving of the gift, walked over to him, stole his blanket … and stoned him. Threw rocks at him. I never saw the old guy again.
Aidan Kearney aka Turtle Boy and Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney are those Green Island boys today, here in Worcester, in the 21st century.
Today, Rosalie, after donning her Santa cap to watch the WFD fire trucks snake up her Ward Street and Richland Street …
… shouted from her 4th floor – yes, FOURTH! floor! – apartment: Another sad footnote to our lives here! … THERE REALLY ARE TWO AMERICAS! My America cannot make enough money to buy the crap houses we rent for exorbitant amounts of $$$ here, in our inner cities. The heroin, the guns! The garbage! Our people are suffering! … These neighborhoods weren’t like this a generation ago – these houses, these streets, were spring-boards to the middle class! I remember!
Rose looked to great minds for answers:
The minds were mute.
American workers need a living wage! Rose cried. FIGHT FOR $15! she shouted, fists clenched. AMERICANS NEED FREE COMMUNITY COLLEGE SO WORKERS CAN LEARN NEW SKILLS TO GET GOOD-PAYING JOBS! she said.
But just look at the local politician who is running for Worcester mayor next election cycle, arguably the city’s most up and coming political up-and-comer: caustic, racist, race-baiting, hate-spewing, Turtle-Boy blog-promoting and all around asshole Michael Gaffney. Mike Gaffney! God help my city!
And on a much bigger canvas … The new president of the United States is Donald Trump! DONALD TRUMP!!! MADNESS! MADNESS!!!! Trump, like Gaffney, is an insult to the working class. A death knell for all Worcesterites/Americans. But Trump and Gaffney get people on their side, get working class folks’ votes because they exploit their fears, their anxieties around a multicultural Worcester/America that is different and beyond their comfort zone. These two politician-creeps work that vein … demonize immigrants, women of color, the disenfranchised. They whip up discord and hatred to garner votes. All an act …
– from Stephen Colbert
Because it is all about power – or better yet, feeling good about themselves, boosting their, believe it or not, LOW SELF ESTEEM!!!!
That’s right.
Donald Trump is lying when he said he had a “great” childhood/youth. He had a shitty one, thanks to Daddy Fred Trump.
From Colbert:
Closer to home, Mike Gaffney also had a shitty childhood – we hear it was God awful deprived. Now this Man-Boy, who deep down loathes himself, wants us Worcesterites TO LOVE HIM BY VOTING FOR HIM, a la Trump. So he can love himself! Finally!!!!
Do not do this, Worcester!
Or America.
First step: IMPEACH TRUMP, or find some Contitutional-loophole to get rid of him!.
Step 2: VOTE ANYONE BUT GAFFNEY FOR MAYOR OF WORCESTER. LIKE THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA and lots of Americans did with president-elect (!!!!) Trump, we cannot make the mistake and dismiss Gaffney as a cynical nut job who could never be mayor of the second-largest city in New England.
He could do it…win … and make Worcester a mean, racist place where children hide in corners – just as he did.
Do you want to see Turtle Boy blogger Aidan Kearey, Gaffney’s mouth piece, in Worcester City Hall, in OUR mayor’s office, as Gaffney’s Chief of Staff?!!!😖😖😖🚒🚔♨♨🎃🎃
We’ve got Breitbart in the Oval Office.
It’s no big jump to Turtle Boy in the Worcester Mayor’s Office.
Worcester, do not discount these two devils: Michael Gaffney and Turtle Boy Aidan Kearney could do it.
Turtle Boy unmasked!!! Here’s the court paperwork (public record)…filed a few days ago. I’ve made some sections bold. – R.T.
1685CV01794 Larson, Lauren et al vs. Kearney, Aidan et al
Case Type
Equitable Remedies
Initiating Action:
Injunction
Case Status
Open
Status Date:
11/30/2016
File Date
11/30/2016
Case Judge:
DCM Track:
F – Fast Track
Next Event:
12/06/2016
Party Information
Larson, Lauren – Plaintiff
Alias
Party Attorney
Attorney
Giunta, Esq., Michael P
Bar Code
543768
Address
LeClairRyan
One International Place
Eleventh Floor
Boston, MA 02110-2602
Phone Number
(617)502-8200
Attorney
Kenneally, Esq., Kevin G
Bar Code
550050
Address
LeClairRyan
1 International Place
Suite 1110
Boston, MA 02110
Phone Number
(617)502-8220
Attorney
Roche, Esq., Michael P.
Bar Code
639357
Address
LeClair Ryan
One International Place
Eleventh Floor
Boston, MA 02110
Phone Number
(617)502-8223
More Party Information
Commodore Builders Corporation – Plaintiff
Alias
Party Attorney
Attorney
Giunta, Esq., Michael P
Bar Code
543768
Address
LeClairRyan
One International Place
Eleventh Floor
Boston, MA 02110-2602
Phone Number
(617)502-8200
Attorney
Kenneally, Esq., Kevin G
Bar Code
550050
Address
LeClairRyan
1 International Place
Suite 1110
Boston, MA 02110
Phone Number
(617)502-8220
Attorney
Roche, Esq., Michael P.
Bar Code
639357
Address
LeClair Ryan
One International Place
Eleventh Floor
Boston, MA 02110
Phone Number
(617)502-8223
More Party Information
Kearney, Aidan – Defendant
Alias
Party Attorney
More Party Information
Turtleboy Enterprises – Defendant
Alias
Party Attorney
More Party Information
Events
Date
Session
Location
Type
Event Judge
Result 12/06/2016 02:00 PM
Civil A
WOR-4th FL, CR 20 (SC)
Hearing on Preliminary Injunction
Reardon, Jr., Hon. James G
Ticklers
Tickler
Start Date
Days Due
Due Date
Completed Date
Service
11/30/2016
90
02/28/2017
Answer
11/30/2016
120
03/30/2017
Rule 12/19/20 Served By
11/30/2016
120
03/30/2017
Rule 12/19/20 Filed By
11/30/2016
152
05/01/2017
Rule 12/19/20 Heard By
11/30/2016
181
05/30/2017
Rule 15 Served By
11/30/2016
120
03/30/2017
Rule 15 Filed By
11/30/2016
152
05/01/2017
Rule 15 Heard By
11/30/2016
181
05/30/2017
Discovery
11/30/2016
300
09/26/2017
Rule 56 Served By
11/30/2016
330
10/26/2017
Rule 56 Filed By
11/30/2016
362
11/27/2017
Final Pre-Trial Conference
11/30/2016
481
03/26/2018
Judgment
11/30/2016
730
11/30/2018
Docket Information
Docket Date
Docket Text
File Ref Nbr.
01/30/2016
11/30/2016
Attorney appearance On this date Michael P Giunta, Esq. added for Plaintiff Commodore Builders Corporation
11/30/2016
Attorney appearance On this date Michael P. Roche, Esq. added for Plaintiff Commodore Builders Corporation
11/30/2016
Case assigned to: DCM Track F – Fast Track was added on 11/30/2016
11/30/2016
Original civil complaint filed.
1
11/30/2016
Civil action cover sheet filed.
2
11/30/2016
Attorney appearance On this date Michael P Giunta, Esq. added for Plaintiff Lauren Larson 11/30/2016
Attorney appearance On this date Michael P. Roche, Esq. added for Plaintiff Lauren Larson
11/30/2016
Plaintiff Lauren Larson, Commodore Builders Corporation’s EX PARTE Motion for Temporary Restraining Order
3
11/30/2016
Endorsement on Motion for Ex Parte Temporary Restraining Order (#3.0): Other action taken Short order of Notice to issue, returnable 12/06/2016 at 2:00pm in courtroom 20.
12/01/2016
The following form was generated: Notice to Appear Sent On: 12/01/2016 10:10:41
Case Disposition
Worcester City Councilor Mike Gaffney and Turtle Boy blogger Aidan Kearney engage in the same kind of race baiting as the divisive Donald Trump. pic:R.T.
By Gordon Davis
When thinking about Worcester City Councilor/Reverend Sarai Rivera’s Austin Street church building controversy and the Worcester City Council, Malcolm X, Southern Black churches and the White Citizens Councils come to mind.
The Worcester City Council has given its support for the partial removal of federal block grant money from the fund to demolish six condemned properties in Worcester. One of the six condemned properties is a building owned by Rivera’s church. The controversy arises because Reverend Rivera is also a Worcester City Councilor.
Rivera is co-minister of the Christian Community Church which is open to all races and serves a mostly Hispanic congregation. Rivera has been an outspoken critic of the Worcester Police in the past. Rivera has also shown support for the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement. To be fair, she has also expressed support for the Worcester Police, especially in its efforts to remove trail bikes from the streets.
Worcester City Manager Ed Augustus has defended his decision to include the property owned by Rivera’s church in the federal block grant for demolition of condemned properties. The property met the same criteria as the other properties on the manager’s list.
The appropriateness of the money going to the church was raised by Turtle Boy blogger Aidan Kearney, who is known for his racism. Michael (Mike) Gaffney, a white Worcester city councilor who has been characterized as a racist, brought the issue before the Worcester City Council.
It is not the first time Gaffney has attacked Reverend Rivera. He has attacked another woman of color when he sought to close the Mosaic Complex.
Malcom X said black coffee loses its essence if too much milk is added. For a long time some people in government and elsewhere said they were “revolutionaries” – or at least progressives. These people, I suppose, were well meaning, but they misled the struggle for racial and economic justice.
The southern Black churches during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s supported their ministers independently of white folks, the white community. It was known that taking the “man’s” money brought ambiguity to whomever the ministers were ministering.
Closer to home, here in Worcester, in 2016: A predominantly Black church’s minister was on the board of directors of the Mosaic Complex. The minister abruptly quit Mosaic’s board when Gaffney and Turtle Boy plunged it into controversy. It is known that this minister also serves on at least one City of Worcester Committee – with some funding involved for his projects. A reasonable person could conclude that instead of ministering to his flock, there is ambiguity in this minister’s responsibilities.
“Divide and Conquer” by racists like Kearney and Gaffney also existed in the old Civil Rights movement. It seems to be extant in the new Civil Rights Movement. We have learned from the old Civil Rights movement that the strongest organizations have been multi-racial organizations. Unfortunately, many progressives still have difficulty grasping this; even the right wingers have their “tokens.”
Wikepedia gives the following definition: “The Citizens’ Councils (also referred to as White Citizens’ Councils) were an associated network of white supremacist organizations in the United States, concentrated in the South. The first was formed on July 11, 1954. After 1956, it was known as the Citizens’ Councils of America.”
Although the Worcester City Council is not anything like the so called Citizen Councils, our city council comes to mind on this issue. The Worcester City Council, to some extent, is a representation of the old Worcester. The old Worcester was mostly White and seemingly comfortable for many White people. It was not so comfortable for many Black and Latino people back then.
This nostalgia by some Worcesterites for Worcester’s exclusionary (based on a person’s color or ethnicity) past has allowed Worcester city councillors like Michael Gaffney, Gary Rosen and Konnie Lukes to remain in office. Councilor Lukes has recently sought a report of arrest records of recent immigrants to Worcester. This is a form of terrorism, as it has caused much anxiety and emotional distress for many law-abiding residents of our city. Lukes could have instead sought a list of hate crimes and harassment of the newcomers to the city in an effort to mitigate the racist Trump effect. She didn’t.
Councilor Riverai’s church’s board of directors should say it did not ask for, nor does it, at this time, want any federal block grant money for the demolition of its condemned property.
The church should remain separate from government – especially when in the struggle for justice.
I suppose each generation will have to learn anew the lessons from the old Civil Rights movement. People with one foot in each camp will eventually mislead us and the man’s few dollars will be the downfall of some and the heartbreak of others.
The family Thanksgiving Day dinner I attended with two friends was divine! Near the New Hampshire border in a farm house we gathered, seated ’round a long, dark wood table, the one my friend’s grandad had built for his farmhouse years ago. He set his big table under the sunniest window. … There were so many veggie dishes and desserts at this Thanksgiving feast! Many cooked from scratch. The wealth and comfort of my host, hostess and their kids, brothers and cousins made me think of – and talk to them about – my beloved Worcester ‘hood: its kids, our inability to get the public library book mobile to visit our neighborhood … so many struggles.
A few days later, a few pounds heavier, I am thinking about the people in my city who are destroying my city, my neighborhoods. Sure, the family in New Hampshire with whom I spent my holiday will do nothing for my people – there really are two Americas!! – but here in Worcester there are public officials who go beyond my dinner hosts’ indifference, detachment and cluelessness. These Woo leaders actively engage in destroying the city they were elected to serve, raise up …
For example:
The in-appropriateness of CDBG funds going to the church co-owned and run by D 4 Worcester City Councilor Sarai Rivera, who is also a pastor there, was trumpeted by At Large Worcester City Councilor Mike Gaffney in the most toxic terms on his most toxic YouTube show and on the city council floor where Gaffney sees himself as a modern day Douglas (ha!). His stupidity was aided and abetted by Aidan Kearney on his (formerly) pornographic, racist, classist and sexist Turtle Boy sports blog. These two Man-Boys are arguably the most racist public figures we have in Worcester today. They are leading this city down such a dangerous path!
Together, under the guise of “crusaders for justice” – an excuse for them to whip up racial hatred in Worcester in the same way Donald Trump has incited racial violence in Anerica – Gaffney and Kearney have destroyed several key progressive Black leaders/groups in Worcester. Groups and people who work to make Worcester’s inner city BETTER. Safer. Healthier. Smarter. Even happier. Gaffney and Kearney will have none of it! Since Day 1. Together. Working as Woo’s evil tag team. They have destroyed: Black (now former) Worcester Public Schools Superintendent Melinda Boone, the Black Lives Matter protesters at Kelley Square and the Mosaic Complex, a tiny Black social welfare agency run by Brenda Jenkins. They have destroyed Brenda, too, a Black woman, a true community activist, known for her fearlessness when it came to speaking out against racial inequality in Worcester and her years of work with our inner-city Black men/youth around mental and physical health issues.
Poof! Gone!
Thanks to the fiery lies and hatred fanned by Gaffney and Turtle Boy Aidan. In the Worcester blogosphere and in Worcester City Hall every Tuesday night. Then oozing into our community life …
Instead of trying to foster thoughtful discussions, open dialogues about important issues – many racial because of the city’s evolving demographics – these two man-boys fan the flames of hatred. They confused Worcesterites, lied to people. Played to folks’ prejudices. Racist Kearney posted unflattering photos of Brenda Jenkins on his Turtle Boy blog – the community roared!!! – then there was his photo of Boone’s head pasted on top of a grave stone – the community roared again!!!!
City Councilor Gaffney has called City Councilor Rivera a soldier in THE “MCGOVERN CRIME FAMILY.” Is this any way to lead a Gateway City in the 21st century? What kind of city councilor talks the way Gaffney does – especially about one of the country’s most progressive congressmen, Jim McGovern? A man who has spent his entire political life fighting for the hungry, the poor, the disenfranchised?… Many in our city.. . Gaffney’s fact finding missions on behalf of the community are sick and twisted. He uses them as an excuse to publicly mock, denigrate and destroy leading people of color in Worcester. In this way racist Gaffney keeps people of color down – in city government, in city politics, in city life, in Worcesterites’ heads.
Lately, City Councilor Konnie Luke’s has joined Gaffney and blindly jumped into the racist fray – calling for lists, names and addresses of Worcester’s refugees and immigrants. She’s stupidly supported many of Turtle Boy and Gaffney’s hate-inspired crusades. I believe Lukes hasn’t thought things out – she is not a racist but she is getting there. She is paranoid and can be sucked into Gaffney’s – or any fear-monger’s – tsunami.
The Rivera church-CDBG issue WAS a valid issue – city officials shouldn’t look like they’re getting city sweet heart deals. But if we take the longview, sweetheart deals have been going on in Worcester city government for decades. DECADES!!!! From hiring, to firing, to job contracts, to neighborhood beautification – the only difference being that, up until recently, the “winners” (or should we say “sinners”?) were white, male and Irish Catholic. So, naturally, everyone looked the other way.
It’s a new world, kids! – and many in Worcester are unwilling to accept the fact. Gaffney and Kearney keep the blinders on.
Many opposing attorneys have bullied legal advocates with the threat of “practicing law without a license.”
The issue has come up in several of the cases I am working on:
In my lawsuit against Turtleboy, his lawyer, Margaret Melican, threatened to have me investigated for practicing law without a license.
Melican’s threat was hollow, as the venues in which I practice do not have a requirement of being a lawyer to represent clients. The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) allows non-attorneys to practice through the initial investigation. The Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA) and respective Housing Authorities do not require representatives of clients to be lawyers.
As a rule, all courts whether State or Federal, require representatives of clients to be lawyers. Of course, a person can represent himself as pro se. For both of my cases, Davis vs. Turtleboy, and Gaffney vs. Davis, I am a pro se party.
A lawyer’s value is found in his knowledge of court rules and legal concepts.
It is easy to confuse evidence with a charge or count. For example, in State courts denial of Federal FMLA cannot be a charge – but it can be evidence of bias. What lay person is familiar with the Courts’ rules for Interrogatories and their one year cutoff date?
Once, during an Investigative Conference at the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) a lawyer for United Parcel Service (UPS) asserted to the Hearing Officer that I should not be allowed to represent my client. The Hearing Officer ignored him. The lawyer made the assertion a second time, and then the Hearing Officer said the Commission allows non-attorneys at this stage of proceedings.
It came up again today when I joined a blockade of a bank auction of a foreclosed house. The main organizer, Lori, told me of how a bank attorney shouted in court that she would face criminal charges for practicing law without a license. She was not sitting at the Defendant’s table, but in gallery.
The bank’s attorney was practicing intimidation and bullying.
For all of the cases in which the Worcester Anti Foreclosure Team (WAFT) supports homeowners, the homeowners are pro se. They represent themselves.
According to Lori, the banks’ attorneys have declared war on WAFT.
Why, I wondered, as the banks’ attorneys get paid either way. She said that with the approximately 34 cases of foreclosures being defended by pro se homeowners, the banks’ attorneys have to work harder and make relatively less money.
The law about licensed lawyers is applicable to disbarred attorneys or to someone who falsely represents themselves as an attorney.
I am not an attorney.
It has been my experience that there is a courtesy that other court officers extend to lawyers that is not extended to pro se parties. Many lawyers call each other “brother” or “sister.” If you are pro se, expect to face disrespect. I recall a case in which I shipped a box of papers to an attorney. The papers in the box were not stamped with a number, and I asked that the box be shipped back to me. My adversary refused and told me to come and get the papers. So I had to go to Boston and get a 40-pound box of papers.
Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney is suing InCity Times for a million bucks! He says he’ll drop his court case if ICT editor/publisher Rosalie (pictured above) NEVER writes about him again (during his stint as city councilor/and running his political campaigns!!) AND if she suspends ICT writer Gordon Davis for one year!!! Hey, Hypocritical Gaffney! What about OUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS?!
By Rosalie Tirella
I just edited and posted Edith’s Donald Trump piece; her sage words made me think of Worcester’s own Donald Trump – dangerous dissembler Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney. The latest Gaffer: How Gaffney used a very prosaic moment in Worcester government – the City Council’s annual review of the City Manager – and turned it into a three ring circus during which he professed to be a guardian of everything that he, in the depths of his mangled little soul, absolutely is NOT! Just like Donald Trump!
The depths of Gaffney’s fucked-up-edness cannot be plumbed in a mere blog post. To do that we would need to enlist the professional expertise of Freud, Jung, Erikson, a host of other developmental psychologists, Shirley MacLaine and quite possibly Jesus Christ.
We haven’t got the time – we must forge ahead! So to sum up: Gaffney came up with an evaluation of Worcester City Manager Ed Augustus that used the C word and other “dirty” words, included a blown up pic of Brenda Jenkins from the Mosaic Complex, was more than 150 pages long … . In short, it was a public document on the verge of a nervous breakdown!
This is OK with us because a. Gaffney’s got the First Amendment on his side and we LOVE the First Amendment, and b. The document, by Gaffney, shows voters just how deeply fucked up City Councilor Michael Gaffney really is! People will read his oompa loompa opus on the city website and say to themselves: How – WHY – did we elect this nut job? NEVER AGAIN!!!!
But at Tuesday’s city council meeting Gaffney took the First Amendment and made himself her brave and true defender! MY GOD! Is this America?? he bellowed to his cowed colleagues! My God! Read the First Amendment! I have it right here – printed out on this HUGE POSTER! Where are the photographers to capture this made for the camera moment? I want pictures of me defending America all over the papers tomorrow! Lights, cameras, demagoguery!!
And, of course, just like the publicity savvy Donald Trump, Gaffney’s photo WAS all over the papers’ websites yesterday and today. Commenters thought him so brave and strong – swimming against the sniveling Worcester City Council current, the people AGAINST America, the Woo elected officials who would flush the First Amendment down the toilet!
Gaffney wins! Worcester City Council loses! Again!
This is such nonsense!
Is this any way to run a city without a downtown?!!
Why does Gaffney NEVER EVER SHED LIGHT ON THE ISSUES??? ONLY USES THEM TO TRY TO ADVANCE HIS POLITICAL CAREER?
He, like Trump, is a piece of shit.
He, like Trump, has taken racial issues that the city is grappling with – Black Lives Matter, safety in our public schools – and used them to reinforce racial/ethnic prejudices of lots of Worcester folks. For their votes! Just like Donald Trump is doing nationally, with millions of Americans. Pathetic!!!
The Turtle Boy brigade is a microcosm of the racial hatred out there, and racist Aidan Kearney-Turtle Boy blogger ostensibly writing about the issues is really spreading hatred. Gaffney is a Turtle Boy supporter and vice versa. They use each other to get votes and clicks, respectively. But they’re both so smart, like Trump, that their fans don’t see their pretzel bending of the truth! Their truth is contorted! They, like Trump, are community-destroyers!
What brings it all home: Gaffney is suing InCity Times for a million bucks! He says we’ve said he’s a racist. He’s mad we’re being mean to him – causing him thousands upon thousands of dollars of psychic pain. What bull shit. This from a guy who two days ago, on the City Council floor boomed that: PUBLIC OFFICIALS HAVE TO TAKE IT ALL! PUBLIC OFFICIALS HAVE TO BE THICK SKINNED AND TAKE THE INSULTS AND CRITICISM HURLED AT THEM BY THE VOTERS! It’s America! It’s the First Amendment!
How creepy is the serpentine Gaffney that behind the scenes, away from the cameras, he tells me that he’ll drop his court case if I, editor/publisher of InCity Times and this website, NEVER write about him again (during his stint as city councilor/and running his political campaigns!!) AND if I suspend ICT contributing writer Gordon Davis for one year!!!
So Gaffney wants to muzzle InCity Times – shut me and Gordy up – and he thinks he can because he’s an aggressive asshole and where would ICT get a lawyer from? (He would never dream of going after Clive M. or other publications with a legal TEAM!)
Well, ICT has got herself a kick ass lawyer!
We’ve got to protect OUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS … from Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney.
The Turtle Boy (sports) blogger is Aidan Kearney, son of former Worcester School Committee member Mary Mullaney.
Aidan is the main writer, salesperson, editor/webmaster for the Turtle Boy sports blog, a repository of all things racist, classist and community-destroying. His ethos, values and EXTREME RIGHT WING wing-nut political perspective is embodied on his racist, shit-spewing Turtle boy blog.
Years ago I had the distinct displeasure of interviewing his mom Mary MULLANEY, right after she was first elected to the Worcester School Committee. Crimped, arrogant, emotionally constipated are the words that best describe Mary Mullaney, Turtle Boy’s mother.
When I interviewed Mullaney I discovered she was every urban school system’s nightmare! She was anti-abortion rights, anti-condom distribution in schools, anti-sex education in schools, anti-teaching any book in English classes but the GREAT BOOKS. I also felt she was anti-poor students – many of them black.
Mullaney did not believe in spending ANY MONEY ON ANY PROGRAM for poor kids. Any money period. She was un-smiling, seemed uncaring – not at all generous in the face of having to lead schools that were, still are, filled with many poor students. I felt she was the last person who’d try to understand where Worcester’s poor families were coming from. No mercy from this conservative Catholic. Holy-er than thou Mullaney.
Back then Aidan Kearney aka Turtle Boy’s mum, Mary Mullaney, and her ilk were getting onto school boards all over the country. THROUGH help from conservative Catholics who were terrified of sex education and condoms in schools … and through SURVEYS ENDORSING MULLANEY AND HER CONSERVATIVE RIGHT WING COHORTS. These surveys WERE DISTRIBUTED IN CATHOLIC CHURCHES all over the city and all over the country, depending on the political race. It was very controversial back in the day.
Mary Mullaney and her EXTREME, CONSERVATIVE COHORTS were called religious right STEALTH CANDIDATES back then.
Backed by the Christian Coalition, they were. The Christian Coalition was a national force in the 1990s. A national conservative movement. Think NEWT GINGRICH, Ralph Reed and you’ll begin to get the picture.
CHRISTIAN STEALTH CANDIDATES LIKE MARY MULLANEY rode that turtle, er, conservative wave into public office. It also helped Mary that she had an Irish surname and the same surname as THE BELOVED MULLANEYS OF WORCESTER. Worcester voters thought she was related to the beloved Judge Mullaney, a Worcester icon. Nope. She was from the Mid West, went to Notre Dame law school and found herself in Worcester when her husband got a bio research job here. Mary was all vinegar, no honey. She was the source of GOD’S LIGHT coming to smite down fornicators like me and teens who had sex and adults who had sex and didn’t use the Catholic church’s fave method of birth control – the rhythm method.
Because Mary and hubby were on the rhythm method they had about 20 kids. The loathsome Turtle Boy (Aidan Kearney) was, unfortunately, one of the little CONSERVATIVE IRISH CATHOLIC buggers that she popped out.
The apple does not fall far from the tree. Turtle Boy sports blog is nothing more than a 35 year old Mary Mullaney on testosterone injections. We see her conservative, arrogant, narrow minded, racist perspective all over Aidan’s/the Turtle Boy’s blog. The same RIGHT WING REPUBLICAN CHRISTIAN crap but updated for 2016 via her son Aidan Kearney: on a blog, on social media, with videos, selfies and a cute cartoon turtle logo. But it’s still the same narrow minded, prejudiced, hateful, community destroying stuff.
If you agree with Turtleboysports, you agree with Mary Mullaney, Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition, Newt Gingrich … Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Paul Ryan, the Tea Party brigade and … yes, Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney, as DANGEROUS a person who’s ever held public office in my city, Worcester.
Like Turtle Boy Aidan Kearney, Worcester City Councilor Michael Gaffney is a racist and a true community destroyer.
